The email arrived two days after a gunman killed a dozen people at the Washington Navy Yard.
A reporter at Campus Reform, a conservative website, was asking the University of Kansas for reaction to a tweet by one of its professors. “The blood is on the hands of the #NRA. Next time let it be YOUR sons and daughters,” the tweet had said.
The university issued a statement, and the story was posted the next day. “Journalism professor says he hopes for murder of NRA members’ children,” the headline read. Once the National Rifle Association picked up the story, everything else at the university seemed to stop.
The telephones in public affairs rang off the hook. So did those in the chancellor’s office. Tweet after tweet slammed the professor, with many calling for him to be fired. The university’s Facebook page filled with angry comments. Emails poured in.
“We had talking points,” recalls Timothy C. Caboni, vice chancellor for public affairs. “But the majority of callers were so irate there wasn’t an opportunity to give a response.”
That September, two years ago, the University of Kansas experienced just how quickly a single tweet could consume an institution and push it into the center of a social-media firestorm. Within about 24 hours, Mr. Caboni estimates, the university received more than 1,000 messages through calls, emails, and other communication.
How should or shouldn’t a college respond? How can an institution best monitor the extemporaneous speech and potentially incriminating videos its professors and students are posting on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Yik Yak, and other platforms?
And how might administrators and communications officers prepare for the day, which seems increasingly inevitable, that they are on the front lines of one of those controversies?
Ignore at Your Peril
How deftly colleges respond can have a major effect on how quickly storms dissipate. Crisis-management consultants say there often remains a gulf between the way top administrators think and react and the way their social-media staff does, with the first group being more likely to want to hunker down.
“Oftentimes among presidents their first attitude is, let’s just ignore this, maybe it’ll go away,” says Mark R. Weaver, head of Communications Counsel, a consulting firm. But it may not, at least not without inflicting some reputational damage.
At Kansas, communications officials engaged as soon as the story about the tweet, which was composed by David W. Guth, an associate professor of journalism, gained traction. They answered every phone call. They let people yell. They asked other departments on the campus to forward emails, with the idea that the communications staff would respond to those messages, too, although maybe not on the same day. They tweeted out a follow-up statement.
Equally important, says Mr. Caboni, they didn’t try to clean up comments on the university’s Facebook page. “The last thing we needed was a second crisis by scrubbing our social-media accounts,” he says.
The university also had two teams working. One was made of communications experts, who hashed out a variety of possible responses. The other, a group of senior administrators — including the chancellor, the provost, the journalism-school dean, and Mr. Caboni — discussed the options presented by the communications experts.
The day after the Campus Reform article came out, things had gotten so out of hand (the professor and others had received threats) that the university decided it had to make an immediate decision about Mr. Guth. They put the professor on temporary leave with pay.
While university officials still had an enormous amount of work to do, including engaging in deeper conversations with the faculty, trustees, alumni, and legislators, making a fast decision about Mr. Guth “gave us an opportunity to regain control over timing,” says Mr. Caboni.
By that night, hours after they had put the professor on leave, the worst of the social-media storm was over.
Be Prepared
Kansas’ experience was unusual in its intensity, but it illustrates the importance of being prepared, say crisis experts. While colleges shouldn’t respond to every angry tweet or Facebook post, they should be able to quickly react when a problem escalates.
To do so, college officials must first monitor what people normally talk about, says Nick Alexopulos, associate director of media relations and social media at Loyola University Maryland. He uses social-media monitoring software that tracks relevant key words like the university’s name as well as hashtags, geotags, and university-related social-media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms. That helps him respond to complaints directly when he sees them, and quickly spot the point at which small problems become big ones.
Two years ago, his office noticed that several students were announcing on social media that the campus was going to close because of a handful of reported mumps cases. The university quickly got the rumor under control by preparing a statement that explained what was going on and clarified that the campus would remain open, and by releasing it on social media.
Second, crisis experts say, colleges should have a triage plan. Communications-staff members and senior administrators should work out in advance who does what when something flares on social media. Teresa Valerio Parrot, head of TVP Communications, tells presidents they should get to know their social-media staff now, so that responses in times of crisis aren’t delayed by “layers of hierarchy.”
Even the best-thought-out plan won’t be able to change the conversation effectively if it comes too late, she says.
Third, the experts urge, enlist allies. Social media can magnify criticism through retweets and reposts. Trustees, alumni, professors, and students can help provide balance by offering support and countering rumors, provided the college gives them information to work with. Colleges should reach out directly to their allies in the midst of a crisis, say communications experts.
Temple University took that approach last summer after a Jewish student was hit by another student during an argument over Israeli-Palestinian issues at Temple Fest, an annual welcome-to-campus event.
Within hours the incident was reported on by TruthRevolt, a conservative website. Soon, rumors and allegations began to fly, suggesting that Temple was an anti-Semitic campus; that the student union, which displays flags from other countries, had refused to show the Israeli flag (it hadn’t); that the president had deliberately scheduled a meeting with concerned Jewish students to conflict with a planned rally (he hadn’t).
Local reporters began calling, wanting to come for the second day of Temple Fest. The campus received dozens of phone calls and tweets from concerned community members, parents, alumni and others, says Ray Betzner, associate vice president for executive communications. His office even heard from news outlets in Israel.
In response, Temple invited the local press for the second day of Temple Fest, and officials at the university’s news center put together a Q&A web page, which they updated regularly when they got new information or needed to answer a new rumor. Mr. Betzner says it was important to release information quickly, even if it was just to say that the university was looking into the incident. “We tried to be as transparent as we could,” he says.
The university was able to move strategically, enlist supporters, and help shut down rumors, Mr. Betzner says, because administrators had worked through various options in advance. “When the bad stuff starts,” he says, “is not when you can begin thinking about your social-media presence and your action in those channels.”
Beth McMurtrie writes about campus culture, among other things. Follow her on Twitter @bethmcmurtrie, or email her at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com.
